As Hawaii begins to displace oil with geothermal electricity, its stable electricity price will make the islands more competitive with the rest of the world. Two-thirds of Hawaii’s economy is based on consumer spending. Low-cost electricity gives consumers more discretionary income. T...
Chinese Firm Surpasses Exxon in Oil Production A big shift is happening in Big Oil: An American giant now ranks behind a Chinese upstart. Exxon Mobil is no longer the world’s biggest publicly traded producer of oil. For the first time, that distinction belongs to a 13-year-old Chinese...
UK: Fuel Panic ‘Self-Inflicted Insanity’ Leaked emails report that ambulance drivers are having fuel rationed – as an industry leader described the crisis as “self-inflicted insanity”. One email, seen by Sky News, suggested that ambulances were being forced to join lenghty queues at p...
But population growth has more direct effects upon the environment. The world’s natural resources are set to undergo unprecedented strain. Water demand is projected to grow by 55 percent by 2050 (including a 400-percent rise in manufacturing water demand), when 40 percent of the globa...
In Kansas, researchers have collected more than a hundred years’ worth of data about temperatures, rainfall, and weather patterns. From the perspective of a single year or even a decade or two, you might not notice much of a difference. There are seasons. Winters are still colder than...
Why Saudi and American bluffing won’t lower oil prices (Hint: It doesn’t work when people know you’re bluffing) If you have the power and the desire to bring down oil prices, the best way to proceed is to start bringing them down. The easiest and fastest method would be to make more s...
Global oil price may hit $240 if Iran closes Hormuz leading US-based energy consulting firm says oil price may hit $240 a barrel and economic growth may fall by over 25 percent if Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz in reaction to the Western sanctions. Analysts at IHS Global Insight als...
MrEnergyCzar on Sun, 25th Mar 2012 3:16 am China out subsidized the U.S. by 10-1 and basically won the future solar industry jobs…. MrEnergyCzar BillT on Sun, 25th Mar 2012 3:49 am Actually, China can retaliate and bring down the Us and or Europe if it decides to. This solar panel thi...
Peak oil and the economy Senior editor of TheAutomaticEarth.org, which chronicles and interprets the ongoing credit crunch, and former editor of The Oil Drum Canada, where she wrote on peak oil and finance. She is an international speaker on energy and global finance and is touring Ne...
Global investor Jim Rogers expects serious economic catastrophe to befall the US and other western governments that debase their currency, and suffer from a serious ageing and diminution of their productive classes. Debt and demographic decline cast an ominous pall over the near to in...
The pequists, as they have become known, appear to be on the defensive these days as they once again roll back their dating of the dreaded supply peak, confounded by the oil industry’s never ending ability to develop new extraction technologies and discover new sources of supply. Whil...
Bob McNally, president and founder of Rapidan Group LLC, talks about Saudi Arabia’s oil production and the outlook for oil prices. Saudi Arabia can increase crude production by as much as 25 percent immediately if needed, the country’s oil minister said, seeking to allay the concern o...
SWIFT is going to pull the plug on Iran on 17 March, three days before the opening of the oil bourse. Via: BBC: Swift, the body that handles global banking transactions, says it will cut Iran’s banks out of the system on Saturday to enforce sanctions. The move will isolate Iran financ...
Climate change, water shortages, higher energy prices, crop diseases and a rapidly expanding population. These are all factors that are making it increasingly difficult and risky for farmers and governments to ensure the world has enough to eat. World agriculture production is not kee...
Pakistan: Gas, fuel shortage creates mass outages Electricity shortfall rose on Thursday beyond 6,000 megawatt (MW) that is almost 50 per cent of total 13,000MW demand in the country, thus necessitating a 10 to 14 hours loadshedding throughout the country . According to the Pakistan E...
51% of Americans Believe a Financial Collapse Is Imminent; 85% Say Country Is Overwhelmingly Under-Prepared A recent survey of 1,007 nationally representative Americans ages 18 and over suggests that most of us believe a doomsday scenario of some kind will occur in the next twenty fiv...
Curiously, one of the real drivers of the current oil price bubble is the Obama Administration’s economic sanctions recently imposed on oil transactions of the Central Bank of Iran. By pressuring Japan, South Korea and the EU not to import Iranian oil or face punitive actions, Washing...
The market is clearly responding to what it sees as dangers ahead. Still, charges of speculation and price manipulation are already being resurrected from 2008. This is nothing new. As early as 1923, Sen. Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette, chairing highly charged Senate hearings on gas...
China’s trade deficit hit $31.5bn in February as exports slumped, underscoring concerns about slowing global demand and cooling growth in the world’s second-largest economy. February exports from China fell 23.6 per cent from the previous month, and rose a slower-than-expected 18.4 pe...
This experimental project consists of three floating wind turbines and one floating power sub-station off the coast of Fukushima. The first stage of this experimental project will begin this year and consists of one 2MW floating wind turbine, the world’s first 66kV floating power sub-...
Vermont’s congressional delegation is once again taking aim at Wall Street speculators as a major culprit in driving up prices at the pump — prices that are likely to spike well above $4 a gallon this summer. But casting investment banks and hedge funds as the sole villains isn’t so b...
The burning of wood is, therefore, energy production with biomass; but as mentioned above, this traditional biomass use can be destructive. New technologies allow for cleaner and more efficient use of biomass. This seems viable especially for East African countries and rural areas, si...
Rusty Baker on Fri, 9th Mar 2012 10:58 pm Vote Ron Paul 2012 to fix the economy! Overpopulation is not a problem; all of the world’s current population can comfortably fit in my home state of Texas. The New World Order uses myths of “Overpopulation”, “Climate Change” and “Peak Oil” to...
- While utilities are allowed to charge customers extra for renewable energy, customers are also seeing savings due to wind power. Said the Commission, “While … surcharges have an impact on electric rates, there are also economic benefits attributable to an increase in renewable energ...
The unpleasant fact we must all face is that the relentless supply crunch – call it `Peak Oil’ if you want, or `Plateau Oil’ – was briefly disguised during the Great Recession and is already back with a vengeance before the West has fully recovered. The IEA said non-OPEC production st...
Eric – thank you for illustrating why freight railroad interests have been so supportive of antinuclear activities for so long. Aside: Warren Buffett has been damning nuclear technology with faint praise for several years; perhaps his recent purchase of Burlington Northern, one of the...
Rusty Baker on Sat, 3rd Mar 2012 8:55 pm Peak Oil “prophets” such as Michael C. Ruppert have been harping on about “economic collapse” and “peak oil” for years, and nothing has happened. I don’t know why you people lend any credence to this dismal, demented fool and put him on a pedes...
End of growth not end of the line Cheap, readily available fossil fuels drove unprecedented economic expansion over the past hundred years, but the tank is starting to run dry — and if we want our economy to run smoothly again, we’re all going to have to get out and push. That was the...
Sizing Up Health Impacts a Year After Fukushima Health impacts from the radioactive materials released in the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns will probably be too small to be easily measured, according to experts assembled by the Health Physics Society for a panel discussion on Thursday. ...
New oil drilling is mostly in deepwater locations, remaining Alaskan fields and low-EROEI “wet” shale that can be fracked (e.g. the Bakken Formation). Dry kerogen shale has much poorer net-energy than wet shale, since it must be cooked to release the oil. And it’s largely dry shale th...
